For John Clements, the waiting is the hardest part. And waiting is all he knows.

"Let's face it," said Clements, tears running down his cheeks. "There's a possibility they may not find everybody."

While the recovery dragged into a third painful day, Clements waited on Monday for word of his daughter and son-in-law, Judy and Robert Medeiros. The couple was aboard the ValuJet on Saturday, on their way home to Rex, Ga., from a Caribbean cruise.

Clements, who lives in Decatur, Ga., said ValuJet offered to fly him to Miami. But the Medical Examiner's Office told him there was no reason to come. There were no bodies to identify. No funerals yet to plan. No one to bring home. No one to bury.

"There's nothing we can plan for," Clements said. "All we can do is wait."

Wait, and wonder what in the world he'll do with the couple's house, their kids, the life they left behind. Married 12 years, the Medeiroses have a daughter Hope, 10. They have four other children from previous marriages. Robert Medeiros, 54, worked at the post office and drove a rig on the side. On Monday, his cab, called the Hope Express, sat in the driveway. A man who liked to fish, Robert Medeiros bought a new wardrobe for the cruise.

Judy Medeiros, 45, enjoyed working in the yard and traveling. A back injury and emphysema forced her to use a wheelchair sometimes, and almost caused her to cancel their trip.

Some families turn to faith. Others struggle with the frustration of knowing the bodies may never be found.

"I would love to give them a decent burial," Willie Shotwell, of Miami, said of his two sons, Ailven and Jarvis. "But I'm keeping in my mind that maybe they won't find them. That's definitely going to hurt me again. But I put it in the good Lord's hands."

Margaret Jarvis, of Gastonia, N.C., spent Mother's Day not knowing whether she would ever be able to bury her son, Dan, and his wife, Linda.

"We can do miracles, people in America can," Jarvis of the divers and the rescue crews searching for answers in the Everglades. "I don't think we're going to turn our backs on the people on that plane. No matter what."